


As the Piper Plays

by ladyhistory



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Angst, Apprentice Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Character Death, Elias Bouchard Being Elias Bouchard, Elias Bouchard Being a Bastard, Elias teaches Jon a Lesson, Gen, Hurt Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Manipulative Elias Bouchard, Past Character Death, Scheming Elias Bouchard, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, Season/Series 03, The Beholding Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), The Eye, The Piper - Freeform, The Slaughter Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), War Scenes/Violence, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29646642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyhistory/pseuds/ladyhistory
Summary: Jon is thrown into the hell of war in the trenches, but whose war is it, and why can't he look away?
Relationships: Elias Bouchard & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	As the Piper Plays

**Author's Note:**

> Set near the end of Season 3. Heavy references to S1Ep7: The Piper.

Mud grits between his teeth and fills his senses.

His eyes open to a nightmare of sight and sound, and it takes Jon several moments to absorb it all into meaning. Fresh mud is packed high on either side of him, its soft bulk braced with splintered wood, sandbags, stray bodies. Nameless figures scramble about, yelling, but their words are unintelligible above the din of screaming artillery. Jon finds he is dressed like them, belted and in beige, and weighed down by a haversack that makes his shoulders ache. He feels his steel helmet slip slightly forward as he looks himself over. No weapon. His legs start to buckle as he recognizes where he is.

Suddenly, a hand grips the strap across his chest and jerks him forward through the seething mass of soldiers. It’s an officer, Jon realizes, but he cannot see his face. Jon stumbles forward and calls out to him, but the man doesn’t turn around, doesn’t answer, doesn’t stop, just keeps leading him along through the maze-like earthworks. The loud bang to the right is deafening, but Jon still feels the shock of the impact and the spray of rancid dirt against his face. By now his entire body is violently shaking, his head pounding with the echo of every mortar shell that strikes near him. He pitches forward suddenly, his legs caught on a solid mass below, a man face down in the trickling mud. The haversack slings forward onto Jon’s neck, crushing him further down into the muck. He staggers to his feet and instinctively grabs the soldier’s arm to help him up. The arm was not attached.

Jon’s cry is cut short by the officer’s savage yank on his shoulder strap. But Jon balks, pulling back sharply until he loses his balance once again. “No, no, stop this! What the _hell_ is going on?”

“Hell is a good word for it, I suppose.” The officer looks down at him and smiles.

Jon stares, and for a moment everything seems to stop. “ _Elias_?”

The officer’s smile widens, almost to an unsettling degree. His voice is low, yet somehow Jon can still hear it. “Follow me.” The words are a command.

Jon feels something else tug at him now, forcing his feet forward one in front of the other. Thoughts finally start to form some coherence in his shell-rattled brain. _This must be a nightmare. This can’t be real._ The sharp whine of a near-miss bullet startles Jon back to the chaos crashing down around him. The soldiers aren’t moving forward anymore, but instead seem to be retreating back toward the communication trenches, away from the screams, those never-ending screams. Jon can’t tell if they are from man or machine. Still he follows Elias, who continues to elbow his way through the crush of bodies still trying to flee. Jon watches the soldiers and wonder dazedly why he’s not following them to safety, to wherever. A hard shove suddenly sends him sprawling into a gaping hole in the trench wall.

“Too much fear here,” Elias grumbles as he lowers himself down next to Jon. The sounds outside seem to fade at an instant.

Jon immediate lunges at Elias. “Tell me what’s going on! All of this. An-and _you!_ What is _happening_?”

Elias’s gaze flicks down to where Jon has managed to grab his collar, then back up. “Just a bit of training, Jon.”

“Training!” Jon laughs, but it sounds hollow. “Training! In the Great War?”

“It is _a_ war,” Elias says slowly, carefully releasing Jon’s fingers from his jacket, one by one.

“Whose war is it?” Jon snaps, then realizes too late the burning words as they leave his mouth.

Elias gives him a measured look, undisturbed. “No need to compel me, Jon. It’s _our_ war, after all.”

“ _Ours?_ What, you and me?” he scoffs. “We’re _not_ allies!”

Elias’s eyes glint a strange green, but it’s gone in a moment. “We don’t have to be.” His brow furrows slightly. “Your understanding of your duties as Archivist is…insufficient. This may prove to be more enlightening.”

“What, a war? Is this one of your mind tricks?”

Elias is staring down at his golden pocket watch, and it shines a little too harshly against the dullness of the mud. He snaps it closed. “Think of it as…guidance.”

“I want out, Elias. Get this out of my head!”

“What makes you think this is in your head?”

The sounds outside grow back to a deafening pitch. Jon feels the dirt walls of the small dugout tremble as shellfire hits above, and he instinctively pulls his legs in tighter to his chest. Dirt rains down on both of them with each rocking hit.

“Jon, you have visitors.” Elias leans back to reveal two familiar faces poking their heads into the entrance of the trench hole.

“What’s your next order, boss?”

Jon starts. “Tim? And…and…” He stares at the other figure. “S-Sasha?”

“Hello, Jon.”

“You’re not dead, Sasha?” he manages weakly.

“Look around, Jon,” Tim chuckles mirthlessly. “We’re _all_ dead. Or going to be.”

“Shut up, Tim!” Sasha says. “You think he doesn’t already know that?”

Jon’s mind is racing. The dugout is barely big enough for two people, let alone four. He unfolds his legs and begins to crawl toward the entrance. “You two, get insi-“

Elias’s arm shoots out across the narrow space and holds him back. “No, Jon.”

“Move,” Jon growls, but Elias’s arm holds fast.

“Jon, what work do you want us to do _here_?” Sasha’s voice calls out, sounding puzzled.

“Yeah,” Tim chimes in flatly. “You’re the boss.”

Elias’s pocket watch is out again. “Sit back, Jon,” he says serenely.

“Get in here!” Jon lunges forward, reaching for Tim and Sasha, but Elias hits him hard with his shoulder, halting all momentum.

“ _Watch,”_ Elias hisses in Jon’s ear.

Tim and Sasha are no longer peering in, but seem to be focused on something else, something above and away from the trenches.

“Is that… _music_?” Tim asks, his mocking tone absent now.

“Yeah,” Sasha says slowly.

Jon feels his stomach drop, and his eyes turn to meet Elias’s. A light is dancing in them. _“Watch,”_ he mouths.

_Oh, God. The Piper._

It doesn’t take long. A screaming shell crashes into the mud a few yards down the trench and goes off with a terrific clap of thunder. The hot shrapnel tears through Tim and Sasha, but Jon can only watch. He _must_ watch. They are still alive, butchered, screaming for him. He fights desperately against Elias to get out.

Elias grunts as he pushes Jon back again, then counts the seconds on the watch face. “Two…one…”

Another shell and they’re gone. Jon cannot hear himself scream through the din of the explosion, but he cannot look away either. He turns and retches on the ground behind him, but Elias seems to take no notice of it. The image of carnage is seared into Jon’s brain and he claws at his helmet as if to try and dig it out.

“You bastard, you _knew_!” he finally spits out at Elias. “We could have saved them!”

Elias doesn’t look up as he tucks the pocket watch away. “We don’t save people, Jon. We watch.”

“Watch everyone die?”

“How is it these soldiers put it? If their number’s up.” He smirks like it’s an old joke.

“No one’s number is up, Elias!” Jon seethes, rage and nausea roiling in his stomach. “Not if we can help it!”

“We only help when necessary.”

“ _That…was…necessary_!”

Elias sighs, as if flustered with a wayward pupil. “You simply don’t get to decide that, Jon.”

“Oh, and who does? The Piper?”

Elias only looks at him, his face devoid of all expression. Then he’s moving out of the dugout, beckoning Jon to follow suit. Again, a force seems to drag at Jon and he feels his fingers dig into the dirt as he crawls forward. He doesn’t look down when he steps back into the trench.

The shelling has stopped, and a heavy, eerie silence has settled uncomfortably over the miles of narrow earthworks. There are no soldiers to be seen as Elias and Jon wind their way through the labyrinth of mud and debris, stepping over and past the human forms that have been strewn about violently in every direction. Jon tries to stop, but still stumbles forward, drawn by some irresistible urge to follow the officer in front of him. The seconds seem suspended somehow, passing slower than their trudging feet. Elias is in no hurry, but Jon keeps his gaze fixed ahead, away from whatever is crunching beneath his feet. The scent of death and smoke and earth still finds him, and he wills himself not to retch again. All is desolation and slaughter for miles and miles of crushing silence.

A slight breeze of rancid air drifts by Jon, and with it comes a sound. He freezes, listening.

“Come along, Jon,” Elias calls without turning around. “Ignore whatever it is.”

A low, faint melody floats on the wind, and Jon feels his mouth go dry. The song fades as quickly as it had come, and Jon is left alone with the dead and the dirt.

“Elias?” he calls out.

There’s a moment’s silence, then, “Jon, is that you?”

Then Jon is running, slipping and stumbling across the wet, broken duckboards toward the familiar voice still calling out to him. He follows the serpentine trenches, hands pushing off from wall to wall to keep his balance amid the muck. He rounds a turn and arrives at the front, for no more trenches stretch beyond this final ditch. Mere yards ahead a solitary soldier is halfway up a ladder, the last step to No Man’s Land.

_“Get down, Martin!”_

The young man hesitates, then obeys, his puzzled expression brightening with recognition.

“For God’s sake Martin, what are you doing?”

“Fighting the war. Aren’t you?”

“ _What war?_ ”

Martin stares at him. “Are you alright, Jon? You were supposed to go over the top years ago.”

Jon’s head is throbbing. “Years? That doesn’t make any sense, Martin, I just got here.”

“Elias says it’s better late than never.”

“I don’t care what Elias says.” Jon rubs his temples. He pauses. “What, have you seen him?”

“Yeah, just went over the top himself.”

Jon pushes Martin aside to scramble up the makeshift ladder. He peeks his head over the top of the highest sandbag and blinks as a flash of gold blinds him. _Not again._

“Martin, have you heard any music out here?”

Martin laughs, then sees that Jon is serious. “Music? No. Why? Why would there be music on a battlefield?”

“Because the Piper plays.”

“The Highland regiment left the front days ago. They didn’t have any pipes on them anyw-“

“No, no! _The_ Piper! Don’t you remember?”

Martin shakes his head. “I don’t know what-“ He stops, then looks around.

“What is it?” Jon presses.

“Do you hear that?”

Jon shoves Martin away from the ladder, his eyes searching frantically for cover. There are no dugouts in the front line, no holes in the earth to crawl away from it all. He grabs Martin’s arm and slings him down hard into the mud at the bottom of the trench. “Get down and stay down!”

“Jon, what the hell is going on?”

“Stay here!”

But Martin is already struggling to get back up. “You can’t go alone!”

“I _am_ alone!” The words are out before he can stop them. Jon takes a ragged breath. “Just-“

A bullet whistles above them, then another. Somewhere several machine guns start chattering at once, and Jon feels that instinctual pull forward again.

“Where are you going?” Martin cries.

Jon doesn’t know. His hands grip the ladder and he’s climbing up, up and over the top into the blistering line of fire. He tries desperately to pull back, but feels his body drop down and begin pushing its way forward along the churned ground.

Something gold gleams several yards away. _Elias._

Jon rises into a running crouch, his eyes fixed on the figure waiting for him across No Man’s Land. The bullets spray furiously around him, but not one finds its target. He’s still picking up speed when the toe of his boot snags barbed wire, a whole web of it, and he’s instantly entangled, crashing to the ground with an agonizing scream. His fingers claw helplessly through the mud, but he’s already sliding down into a deep shell crater before he can pull himself up. The machine guns fall silent.

“Just on time, I think,” Elias notes, standing above him. “I’m glad Martin didn’t keep you long.”

Jon shudders in pain as every breath draws the barbs deeper into his flesh. “M-make it stop.”

“It is unpleasant, but what makes you think I can do anything?”

“The hell you can, Elias! Do something!”

“I am. I’m watching.”

“Damn you and your watching!”

“Ah, ah,” Elias warns as he stoops down closer to Jon. “The Ceaseless Watcher can hear as well.”

“Damn the Eye and whatever it wants!”

“An undisciplined soldier,” Elias sneers. “What do you think you’ve been doing here?”

Jon begins to pant in shallow breaths as the barbed wire seems to squeeze tighter around him. “Trying to…survive…whatever nonsense…you put into my head.”

“I’m afraid it’s all quite real. This,” Elias pauses to look around, as if savoring the scene before him. “ _This_ is what it means to be an Archivist, Jon.”

The pipes begin to play again, louder and closer this time.

“Am I going to die, Elias?”

Elias looks down with a smile. “In a way,” he says slowly. His gray eyes glint green again as he slips a gas mask on.

Jon’s hand finds a large sliver of shrapnel and with one last burst of effort he lunges forward to plunge it deep into the leg above him. Elias screams and staggers backward as a sickly green-yellow gas begins to creep into the crater. Jon watches it slowly twist and settle around him in helpless horror. It burns immediately, like fire torching first his skin, then his lungs as he breathes it in. The worst of all is his eyes, a white-hot pain that sears into his very brain as he tears at his eye sockets in agony. He closes his eyes…or are they open? He can no longer see to know.

* * *

Jonathan Sims pitches forward with a hoarse cry, his hands reaching out to balance his body against the firm frame of his desk. His eyes burn and his skin feels raw, but he doesn’t dare look beneath his clothes to investigate. The dim light in his office flickers once or twice, and all is quiet. Jon’s ragged breathing gradually slows, but his shaking limbs don’t.

It is some time before he sees Elias standing silently in the doorway, that same unsettling smile upon his lips. He says nothing, but snaps a gold pocket watch closed and limps away, his walking cane tapping sharply against the floorboards.


End file.
